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Countess of Carnarvon. The Earl and the Pharaoh: From the Real Downton Abbey to the Discovery of Tutankhamun. Harper. Dec. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780063264229. $28.99. BIOGRAPHY

You may not know Lady Fiona Carnarvon, but you know her country home, Highclere Castle, where the sensationally popular Downton Abbey is filmed. Here she draws on Highclere’s archives to chronicle the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, financed by her forebear George Herbert, an antiquities collector and the 5th Earl of Carnarvon. Just in time for the centennial; with a 30,000-copy first printing.

Gristwood, Sarah. The Tudors in Love: Passion and Politics in the Age of England’s Most Famous Dynasty. St. Martin’s. Dec. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9781250271426. $29.99. HISTORY

Gristwood, who writes frequently on 15th- and 16th-century Europe (Game of Queens), takes a new look at the much-visited Tudor dynasty to show how it was influenced by the rules of courtly love, too often brushed aside as existing merely in the imagination of troubadours and poets. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Levy, Buddy. Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk. St. Martin’s. Dec. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9781250274441. $29.99. CD. HISTORY

Organized by Canadian anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the Canadian Arctic Expedition was launched in summer 1913 with experienced ice navigator Bob Bartlett captaining the brigantine Karluk. The ship quickly became trapped in ice, Stefansson left with a small team to hunt caribou, and Bartlett and the remaining crew struggled to survive as theKarluk was eventually crushed and sank. Levy ( Labyrinth of Ice) tells a story of heroics and tragedy; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Rose, Alexander. The Lion and the Fox: Two Rival Spies and the Secret Plot To Build a Confederate Navy. Mariner: Houghton. Dec. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780358393252. $28.99. CD. HISTORY

Author of the New York Times best-selling Washington’s Spies and more recently Empires of the Sky, Rose tells the story of two secret agents sent to neutral England during the Civil War. The Confederacy’s James Bulloch aimed to acquire a swift fleet to challenge the Union, the North’s Thomas Dudley aimed to stop him, and the battleground was Liverpool’s teeming dockyards, with the outcome of the war hanging in the balance. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Weir, Alison. Queens of the Age of Chivalry. Ballantine. (England's Medieval Queens, Bk. 3). Dec. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9781101966723. $30. HISTORY

In this third in a four-volume series on England’s medieval queens, New York Times best-selling historian and historical novelist Weir escorts readers on a visit to the Plantagenet queens who ruled England between 1299 and 1399: Marguerite of France; Isabella of France (aka “the She Wolf”); the popular Philippa of Hainault; Anne of Bohemia, the doomed first wife of Richard II; and Isabella of Valois, Richard’s second wife.

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